The U.S. government tells Americans traveling to Beijing to assume that laptops, cell phones and other devices will be hacked, and information on them copied, during the games.

One expert warns that even digital cameras could be hacked by the Chinese government if plugged into one of the many digital photo-viewing kiosks in the city.

Most taxi drivers and other attendee-facing people in China have reportedly been "recruited" as "intelligence agents" ordered to report any suspicious behavior.

The government has deployed 100,000 police in Beijing alone during the games, plus another 100,000 People's Liberation Army soldiers and 600,000 "security volunteers," whose job is to report "suspicious behavior."

These 800,000 people are the public face of Olympic security. Behind the scenes, an unknowable number of people are monitoring all those cameras and microphones; hacking computers and stealing secrets; monitoring web sites and reading e-mail; listening to phone calls and tracking the movements of suspicious people.

Of course, the terrorist threat to the Olympics is real. But most of the security effort is aimed at snuffing out protest or criticism of the government.

Many journalists have been denied entry to China to cover the games, and access by journalists to many Web sites has been blocked, despite the unblocking of some after initial protest. E-mail of foreign journalists covering the games is selectively blocked by Chinese authorities.

I predicted in this space in December that the Olympics would prove a "disaster" for the Chinese government because dissident groups and disgruntled citizens will likely do all they can to use the Olympics to gain attention for their causes and grievances. The government, I predicted, would crack down harshly, and this authoritarian, anti-democratic activity would become the main event at the games. When China was granted the 2008 games seven years ago, Chinese officials said the games would bring China the "respect, trust and favor of the international community." My prediction was that China's handling of security will bring China the opposite.

But what if I'm wrong?

What if the Olympics turn out to be the public relations coup of the century for China's authoritarian government?